A memorial like no other

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer
Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories leading up to Friday's opening in Oceanside of the touring Vietnam Wall Experience, a three-quarter -size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. | Tuesday, April 20, 2004 2:10 PM PDT ∞

A hole in the ground. A black tombstone. A shameful disgrace.

Those were just a few of the names attached to the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial when it was proposed by a 21-year-old Yale student.

Twenty-two years later, the memorial is the most-visited monument in Washington, D.C., and its creator, Maya Lin, is recognized as one of the nation's most respected artists.

The memorial began through the efforts of one man, Jan Scruggs, who at 19 returned wounded from Vietnam to a country that seemed to be paying little interest to its returning veterans.

Determined to create a memorial for his fellow veterans, Scruggs formed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 1979 while working for the U.S. Department of Labor, using what little money he could afford as the initial investment.

Congress authorized the memorial in 1980, and that October the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund announced a $20,000 nationwide design competition open to any citizen 18 years or older, the first such contest of its kind.

Competition guidelines called for the memorial to be harmonious with the surroundings, be free of political statements and, at Scruggs' insistence, to bear the names of the 58,235 Vietnam veterans who were killed or missing.

The eight judges had to consider more than 1,400 entries, including one from Lin, who reportedly had first modeled her design with mashed potatoes in Yale's dining hall. Their decision was unanimous, but not necessarily popular.

Ross Perot, who had contributed $160,000 for the competition, hated Lin's design. Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde wrote to President Reagan in protest, calling the design "a political statement of shame and dishonor."

Some detractors used racist and sexist slurs against Lin, who retreated from publicity and took a job working for a Boston architect after college.

Lin's parents are from China, which they fled in the late 1940s when the communists came to power, but she was born in Athens, Ohio, in 1959. Her father was a potter and had taught her to sculpt, and both parents were faculty members at Ohio University.

As a Yale undergraduate studying funerary (burial) architecture, Lin learned about the memorial competition and visited its Washington, D.C., site with two classmates.

Lin declined to be interviewed for this story, but in an interview with the Washington Post, Lin said the idea for the monument "just popped into my head" during her visit to the site.

Criticism of the design eventually subsided after a hearing on the project in early 1982, when Army Gen. Michael Davison suggested a compromise: A traditional bronze statue of three Vietnam vets by Washington sculptor Frederick Hart was added near the site in 1984.

What may really have quieted the critics, however, was Lin's memorial itself. Once it was built, visitors realized its full impact. Every day since its dedication on Veterans Day 1982, people have wept at finding a name they recognize, left flowers behind and taken rubbings of the wall's engravings.

"The Wall had a huge impact," said Kim McConnell, a professor in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. "It's an extremely powerful piece. It was really kind of taking a very modernist notion of what a memorial could be."

While two-dimensional renderings of the wall may have left some people cold, McConnell said, when people see it in person, its impact is finally realized.

"I don't think there's anybody who doesn't visit the memorial itself who doesn't feel the power of the piece," he said. "It appears to be not really anything when you approach it. There's just this landscape. There's an introduction as you come up to it, and a line of marble that tends to grow until it's way over your head. And it's an imposing piece because of that. It's very understated, and that's the brilliance of her design."

While Lin's piece may have redefined the concept of public memorials, it didn't alter them forever, said McConnell, who noted that the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., is very traditional.

Lin today works in a New York studio, which was described as "Spartan" in a review of the 1995 Oscar-winning documentary, "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision." Lin reportedly still prefers working with clay and pencils over three-dimensional software, and a staffer at her studio last week apologized for not being able to supply a digital photo of Lin because their e-mail was not working.

Since going from graduate student to overnight sensation in 1980, Lin has had a varied and successful career.

In 1988, the Southern Poverty Law Center contacted her to create the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. The memorial is a solid granite disk engraved with names and events from the civil rights movement, combined with a 9-foot granite wall inscribed with a quotation from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech: "Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Both pieces are covered with a thin stream of running water that runs over visitors' hands when they touch the inscription.

"Active participation involves the viewer in a direct and intimate dialogue with the work," Lin wrote about her art in her 2000 book, "Boundaries."

Not wanting to be associated only with monuments, Lin branched out. She renovated portions of a new Museum of African Art in New York, designed private residences and sculpted a statue commemorating women at Yale University.

At Ohio State University, Lin designed a three-level garden of crushed green glass in 1993 using 40 tons of recycled glass piled into waves. The next year, she designed a 14-foot-long clock for Pennsylvania Station in New York, and in 1995 she created The Wave Field, a series of grassy hills that resemble waves, at the University of Michigan.

In 2002, she created a sculpture for the new Minneapolis Client Service Center, and recently she designed a new building for Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, N.Y., a $5 million-a-year business that supports the poor and disenfranchised.

In her most commercial venture, Lin has created a collection of furnishings for Knoll Inc. One line, Stones, featured low stools and tables cast in Fiberglas-reinforced concrete. Another line, called "The Earth is (Not) Flat," was inspired by the curvature of the Earth and included the Longitude chaise lounge and the Equator table and chairs.

Coming full circle, last year Lin was a judge in a national memorial competition. She was one of 13 members on the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the winning design, Reflecting Absence, will contain the names of the people who were lost.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at gwarth@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5410.

The Vietnam Wall Experience

11 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday ---- arrives in Oceanside

8 a.m. Wednesday ---- assembly begins

Thursday ---- educational visits for students

Noon Friday ---- opening ceremony

7 p.m. Saturday ---- candlelight ceremony

5 p.m. Sunday ---- closing ceremony

8 a.m. Monday ---- disassembly begins

* Donations to help cover the costs of the Oceanside visit can be mailed to the Armed Services YMCA, P.O. Box 555028, Building 16144, Camp Pendleton, CA 92055-5028. Checks should include the note "for Vietnam wall."

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